Proposal: Disclose airline fees

The U.S. Transportation Department is proposing that passengers be provided detailed information on checked bag fees, advance seat assignments and carry-on bags. The airline industry opposes the proposal.

Passengers love the idea, but airlines hate it. The government wants to require that travelers be told up front about basic services that aren't included in the price of a ticket and how much extra they'll cost.

The U.S. Transportation Department proposed Wednesday that passengers be provided detailed information on fees for a first checked bag, a second checked bag, advance seat assignments and carry-on bags.

The rules would apply whether passengers bought tickets on the phone, in person or online — and not just from airline websites. Airlines that want their tickets to remain available through travel agents and online ticketing services would have to provide them information on fees for basic services, too, something most have been reluctant to do.

The idea is to prevent consumers from being lured by low advertised airfares, only to be surprised later by high fees for services once considered part of the ticket price.

Airlines currently are required to disclose only bag fees, and even then they don't have to provide an exact price. Some provide a wide range of possible fees in complex charts.

"A customer can buy a ticket for $200 and find themselves with a hidden $100 baggage fee, and they might have turned down a $250 ticket with no baggage fee but the customer was never able to make that choice," Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said.

But adopting the changes would be the wrong choice, said a trade association for the airline industry. The "proposal overreaches and limits how free markets work," Airlines for America said in a statement. And it predicted "negative consequences."

Under the proposal, fees would have to be specific to the advertised airfare. The proposal would prohibit "unfair and deceptive" practices by airfare search tools, such as ranking flights by some airlines ahead of others without disclosing that bias to consumers. The rule doesn't cover fees for early boarding, curbside check-in and other services regarded as optional.

The government also wants to expand its definition of a "ticket agent" so that consumer protection rules also apply to online flight search tools like Kayak and Google's Flight Search, even though they don't actually sell tickets.

The public has 90 days to comment on the proposal. Foxx said he hopes the rule will become final within the next year.